ARRFAN (2021): A RAVE REVIEW FOR A NAÏVE CINEPHILE

[A FICTIONAL REVIEW OF A FICTITIOUS FILM]

By Someone (who somehow survived the 21st century)

It was 2021, as far as I remember, and they had released a film called Arrfan. I had no idea, back then, what it meant. I still have only a faint idea (chuckles). But I know...I totally understand, the filmmaker’s intent behind the idea of naming it in such a way. After all, it is a film about the complex, not complicated, life of a man who struggles amidst the argument between the real and the imaginary. Reminiscent with mathematics? Well, it is! Let us find out how relevant it is, after 21 years of its release.

The film starts with the protagonist trying really hard to keep up with colleagues at his workplace. But when he’s unable to meet the deadline...ever, they ask him to leave. Or, they fire him. However, he always manages to find a new job after having been fired or resigned from the previous one. This explains his rented, dilapidated house that is only good enough to have a pint of beer in the begrimed balcony, with a neighbour, talking about how fucked up your lives are. In fact these sessions of conversation with his beer-buddy have been repeatedly been shown throughout the film and they intensify as we get more involved. The walls keep changing, both bettering and worsening, with time. Again, depending upon the money he is making at that particular time: as obscure and inconspicuous as his job...it’s never clearly shown what exactly he does. In a scene where his buddy asks, “Zee! What do you exactly do?” Zee tells him a rather interesting story about what he is capable of doing. He tells him what he used to do, long ago. He used to be an actor but unfortunately, a really unknown face amidst a huge crowd. Nevertheless, he used to do the best he could, until he’d get a bigger, better part. And he got it, at least a promise, when on the sets of Mandir Nahi Banayenge (20--), Tabassum (played by Mallika S.) noticed him and smiled. This happened twice. One thing led into another and they started seeing each other, of course, covertly. She told him that she had fallen for the pursuit of his real-self while ‘pretending’ and hence suggested him to retain it while auditioning for the role she had recommended him to. However, he didn’t get the part and the caller didn’t tell him why. He called Tabu and asked her about the rejection. She visited him and told him that they really liked his monologue but...He scoffed and waited for the reason. “They think you’re not good-looking enough to be a...” She was afraid to finish as he had already started to lose it. He wanted to know if she believed in the same. She only asked him to accept this hard-hitting reality and agree to the studio’s lifetime offer to work forever, as an artist subordinate to the ‘great’ heroes. Before breaking down, he managed to tell her that he’d sign for sure but the ‘thing’ between them would end there. “And...she never came back,” Zee tells his friend while looking at the ceiling fan that appears to be slowing down thus adding to the surrealism that the film is unable to flinch from. When his friend asks him about the contract with ZRF, he has this conniving grin similar to that of an antagonist. What he tells him about what had happened at the studio, is where the indiscernible line between reality and illusion can be perceived:

As an actor hardly seen in a scene for more than a few seconds, what more could he have done than being more...noticed? Actually much more...like Zee did. He had nothing to gain by being noticed but a lot if the ‘superstars’ would’ve underperformed due to his mere presence. That was almost impossible to pull off with every screenplay. One such opportunity was 47 (20--) where he had to play a revolutionary-turned-informer at HSRA. In a scene, he was supposed to kick-start an ‘Inqilab Zindabad’ amongst a few young recruits after Azad’s (Salman K.) brief on The Kakori Action. So Zee got to set the mood that others had to pursue accordingly. Salman was confused between acting naturally and reacting to the cue. As a result, he delivered an Inquilab Zindabad that a weaker Azad would’ve preached. As the critics described it. And that, is how it started. Even if it were a scene where Zee, as an attendant, would bring a towel to his room, Salman would be disconcerted. This went on for a ‘while’. He was vexed by fans and critics, so much so, that he had to terminate his contract. Zee was having fun but he stopped when he realized that he had taken it too far when the audience went berserk. From a handful walking out of the theatres to none going to one was quite an anti-Renaissance that was the last thing Zee would’ve anticipated. And when he saw Tabu’s poster burning at the box office, he felt that it was...the end.

BUT THIS IS NOT HOW THE FILM ENDS.

Before I tell you how it does, we must know what it might mean. According to me, apart from being about the politics in film-industry, it delves deeper into the artist-audience relationship. It’s rather a call to fellow filmmakers to avoid nurturing audiences with what they want (or what generally works) and give them what they deserve. The film was called out by critics, some of the handful who had watched it then, for its negative portrayal of Bollywood being neglectful towards its junior artists. But it was rather about how an artist copes up with failures and starts valuing his life more. Be it Salman or be it Zee! After quitting the industry, Zee had resorted to listening to DK, a South Indian music composer. Everyday, while travelling back home from work, to restore the serenity that he had begun with. Upon being asked by his buddy if anyone ever recognized him, he narrated an incident when a pretty woman standing next to him (in a bus) approached him. She said, “I...I think I have seen you somewhere.” He gasped to wonder and came back, “Maybe, in films!” And, they broke into laughter. The music in his headset becoming a music to the scene complemented the attachment between the two strangers, no matter how momentary it was. This was where Zee discovered his identity. He knew who he was. Who was he? Who was Zee?

Not an actor anymore. But a real person like we are.

Was he ever an actor?

Interestingly, there’s a theory by a not_so_noob_cinephile on Reddit that Zee never used to be an actor. He made up that story to tell, to a friend, as a coping mechanism to survive failures in life. To tell himself that he has lived. Was there even a friend, the cinephile asks and hints that, even if the story was real, he had no friend to share it with. This is also evident in the last scene where a broker who pays a visit, only to interfere their conversation, doesn’t acknowledge Zee’s friend. He greets Zee and goes ahead to showing the flat to a new tenant. And Zee begins to follow them. It is now from Zee’s POV that we start realizing how his home is or was (we don’t know if they’re evicting him for rent or he’s shifting). It feels like the broker explains the house to the tenant in the same way as a director takes his audience through his film. We (as Zee) are happy to learn that a home is much more than engineering and architecture. Zee (and we) is content when the broker talks of the essence of time in the cracks rather than the glamour-coated walls. He is healed. And so are we. More than breaking the fourth wall here, the director (Vikram M.) defines the basic purpose of watching a film, that is, to allow our minds to perceive something we can’t, in reality, though we are capable of. We are as capable as Zee. We don’t care whether he is Zeeshan Khan or Zero. He is that unnoticed no one that we all have been.

This film was released online due to the disease that had plagued humanity in 2021. It wasn’t welcomed as warmly as it should’ve been. Ironically, a film about an audience didn’t reach any. I hope the reader could imagine how it would have been and felt that it is still relevant and relatable. How much do you rate it? I rate it:

--/10